Autoworkers put up with the conditions because it allowed them to live the Fordist dream of purchasing the products they made and, thanks to the part of the picture neither foreseen nor desired by Henry Ford—the UAW—workers could do even more: buy homes and live in a prosperous community. For minority workers especially, employment in unionized industries provided the financial ability to climb up from poor neighborhoods to “middle class” surroundings with single-family homes, better schools, and safe streets.

By the late 1970s all this began to change. Mighty General Motors, the largest corporation in the world, was facing the challenge of increased global competition, particularly from Japan’s auto industry. By remaining blind to what the Japanese cars offered American consumers, GM watched its share of the U.S. car market shrink steadily. Its response, when it finally came, included three strategies to increase productivity and profits: stepping up automation; outsourcing production to the Third World; and introducing the team concept of labor-management cooperation, borrowed from Japan, to reduce industrial conflict.

In terms of automation, GM founded a robotics company in 1982, purchased software producer Electronic Data Systems (EDS) in 1984, and bought California-based aerospace corporation Hughes Aircraft for $5 billion in 1985, signaling its recognition that machines were going to play an increasingly central role on the assembly line and computer-related technologies would do the same under the hood. And GM would introduce automation its own way.